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All Wilmeth Sidat-Singh could do was sit. Because of a gentleman’s agreement — an unofficial contract between Southern and Northern schools that prevented African Americans from playing anywhere under the Mason–Dixon line — Sidat-Singh didn’t dress against Maryland.

He sat next to teammate Marty Glickman in the locker room when the head coach and athletic director told him the news at a blackboard talk the night before the game. A week earlier, he threw three touchdowns to defeat Cornell. But No. 7 Maryland would’ve canceled the game if he took the field. Sidat-Singh kept his head down on the sidelines throughout the No. 17 Orange’s 13-0 loss.

“We were beaten, but not by 11 men in football togs,” The Daily Orange’s “Mulling It Over With Muller” column read after the game.

That game took place 85 years ago on Oct. 23, 1937. The gentleman’s agreement also kept Sidat-Singh out of a Syracuse basketball game against Navy a few months later. Other Northern colleges like Northwestern ensured all their players would be allowed to play at Southern schools. Syracuse didn’t.

“Big man on campus, who had to sit out a game. It wasn’t our finest moment,” said Larry Martin, former Vice President for Program Development at SU.

Sidat-Singh starred on Syracuse’s football and basketball teams in the late 1930s, leading SU on the hardwood to three straight winning seasons. Former Washington Tribune writer Sam Lacy compared him to Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, saying he was one of the most talented athletes of his generation. Sidat-Singh was “on the absolute cusp of becoming a enduring name,” according to journalist Sean Kirst, but people forgot his importance after he died in a 1943 plane crash while training as a Tuskegee Airmen. Eventually, Syracuse “got it right,” Martin said, retiring Sidat-Singh’s number in 2005 before Maryland apologized in 2013.

“It’s always important to know about our history and what went right and what didn’t go as well as it should have,” Martin said. “This man fought all kinds of barriers and nothing could hold him back.”

Sidat-Singh arrived at Syracuse on a basketball scholarship, but after former lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Sr. saw him “throwing the ball a mile” in the quad, he offered him a spot on the football team. Sidat Singh joined prior to Oct. 16’s matchup against Cornell despite not playing at all in high school.

Syracuse listed Sidat-Singh on rosters as “Hindu” or “Indian” because of his fair skin and Indian stepfather Samuel Sidat-Singh, according to the book “Gentleman’s Agreement: The 1937 Maryland-Syracuse Football Controversy” by James R. Coates Jr.

Courtesy Syracuse University Special Collections Research Center

His teammates called him “Sing” and he signed letters with “As ever, Singh,” but the local press in Baltimore and Syracuse tacked on other nicknames. They called him “America’s only Hindu gridder,” “Manhattan Hindu,” “The hindu passer who came from the ranks of basketball” and “Ossie’s Hindu Halfback.”

Maryland would’ve let Sidat-Singh play if he was Indian. But an article from Lacy of the Washington Tribune revealed that Sidat-Singh was fully African American. His father died when he was extremely young, and Sidat-Singh took his stepfather’s last name.

“The players were under the impression that he was an Indian from India, and not of the Black Race,” Maryland defensive end Francis Beamer said in Coates Jr.’s book.

Lacy called the game “an unsoiled football record went by the boards here today as racial bigotry substituted for sportsmenship (sic.) and resulted in the removal of the spark-plug from the machine which was Syracuse University’s football team.” The New York Times didn’t put Sidat-Singh on the roster or give a reason why he wasn’t starting.

After Sidat-Singh’s death, he was “utterly forgotten,” said Kirst, a former columnist at The Post Standard. When Kirst wrote something on Bernie Custis, who was believed to be Syracuse’s first Black quarterback, SU graduate Luke LaPorta informed him that he wasn’t the first. Sidat-Singh was.

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“I don’t know what the deal was, but no one knew anything about him,” Kirst said about the mainstream media at the time. “What I found was that the city’s Black community remembered him vividly, powerfully.”

Kirst began digging for more about Sidat-Singh. He spoke to Glickman, Sidat-Singh’s aunt, who was at that 1937 game, and others to learn as much as possible. Eventually, Kirst asked Martin: “Have you ever heard of this guy?”

Martin recognized the name and Kirst sent him information he found. Martin was impressed as Kirst delivered more information. And more. And more.

“This guy was just an incredible individual,” Martin said. “Then I thought, ‘What can we do with this?’”

Martin wrote a letter featuring the research to then-Chancellor Kenneth Shaw. When Martin ran into Shaw in New York City, the chancellor gave the “OK” to retire the jersey.

“We knew we had one chance to do it right,” Martin said.

A nationally broadcast basketball game against Providence on Feb. 26, 2005 provided the perfect audience. His aunt, fellow Tuskegee Airmen and his SU teammates were in attendance as his No. 19 entered the rafters. ESPN didn’t cut to a halftime break, filming the ceremony instead.

“They followed the entire ceremony,” Martin said. “It was a home run.”

The same year, prior to a football game the same year, Martin told SU legend Jim Brown about Sidat-Singh’s story. Brown, a Civil Rights activist with Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, immediately understood the importance.

Brown walked into the locker room and told Sidat-Singh’s story “verbatim” to what Martin had told him. He said “‘when you go into the Dome and you look up, that’s a man that paved the way for all of us.”

Published on October 23, 2022 at 11:33 pm

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu